the
Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter
37

January 26, 2004

"I started thinking and got carried away."
--Dan Garvin on why he left Scientology after 27 years.

In this issue: Darwin Day Sacramento; radio interview posted; a new
book you won't find at the Grand Canyon Association bookstore; the Amazing
Meeting 2; the SD's attempt to go global; and a few boring stats.

**

Darwin Day Sacramento

I'll be selling and signing copies of The Skeptic's Dictionary at
the Darwin Day celebration in Sacramento on February 7 from 2:30-3:30 PM in
Curtis Hall at Sierra 2 Community Center, 2791 24th Street. The featured
speaker is Taner Edis. Here are a few words from the flyer for the event.

Born in Istanbul to Turkish and American parents, Taner Edis completed
his undergraduate work at Bogaziši University and his Ph.D. at The Johns
Hopkins University in 1994, in condensed matter physics. Working in diverse
areas, from atmospheric modeling with collaborators at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory to the philosophy of machine intelligence, he is
currently assistant professor of physics at Truman State University,
Kirksville, MO.

Dr. Edis has written numerous articles on the topic of anti-evolutionary
thought, appearing in The Skeptical Inquirer, Reports of the
National Center for Science Education, and Skeptic. His critique
of "Intelligent Design" in the March 2001 Skeptical Inquirer
attracted national media attention, including notice in a front-page New
York Times article of April 8, 2001. His writing has characteristically
combined scientific rigor with an ability to reach a broad audience. Edis's
book, The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science, an
accessible defense of a naturalistic view of the world, was published by
Prometheus Books and received the Morris D. Forkosch award for "best
humanist book of 2002." Edis will be available after his presentation to
autograph his books which can be purchased in advance or at the event.

I hope to see some of you there. The program begins promptly at 3 PM.
Doors open at 2:15 PM.

One of our readers recommends a book that is a takeoff on the Left Behind evangelical series of Tim Lahaye and
Jerry B. Jenkins.The takeoff is by Earl Lee and is called Kiss My Left Behind.

***

In the last newsletter I said I would let you know if I heard from our
National Park Service about selling creationist literature at the Grand
Canyon National Park bookstore. I heard from Maureen Oltrogge, Public
Affairs Officer, Grand Canyon National Park. She writes:

National Park Service (NPS)
current policies and direction to park staff require teaching the latest
scientific methods for explaining the formation of geologic features in
the parks. These methods are endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences,
the National Science Foundation and numerous professional scientific
organizations. We use these scientific explanations in our interpretive
talks, visitor center films (Grand Canyon currently does not offer a
film), and wayside exhibits and other teaching opportunities.

The Grand Canyon Association, a non profit organization whose mission
is to cultivate knowledge, discovery, and stewardship for the benefit of
Grand Canyon National Park and its visitors, currently offers the book
"Grand Canyon: A Different View." The book is by Tom Vail and claims that
the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old, developing on a biblical
rather than evolutionary timeframe. Shortly after the book went on sale,
individuals raised concerns about its appropriateness in an association
bookstore. The superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park has sent the
book to the NPS Washington Office for review in terms of its
appropriateness as a sales item in a national park. Once the review has
been completed and an opinion rendered, that information will be made
available to the public.

I quote from the NPS Management Policies Web site: "Factual information presented will be current,
accurate, based on current scholarship and science, and delivered so as to
convey park meanings, with the understanding that audience members will draw
their own conclusions."

So, the Ranger (mentioned in the last newsletter) who provided a creationist alternative to current
scholarship and science, claiming he was required to do so by law, was not following Park policy.

We skeptics are an odd lot. We worry about whether somebody is taking
vitamins without scientific proof that it is doing him any good and we worry
that people commit suicide because they believe a space ship is going to
pick up their bodily shells and transport them to a "higher level." We worry
that people are drinking filtered tap water and think it is "pure" or
"healthy." And we worry that some people are trying to fight cancer by
wearing a crystal. We are concerned that very few in our movement are
non-white. In short, we're concerned about the big and the small, the
trivial and the monumental. Some of us are off pursuing academic questions.
Some of us are passing on our personal experiences with the paranormal or
the supernatural. Some of us are trying to educate others about deception
and self-deception. We're a mixed lot and when we get together the mix seems
to work pretty well most of the time. The Amazing Meetings have been no
exception.

I'm not going to write a complete review of the events or talks. I did learn
of a few Web sites you might want to check out. First, I want to thank those
of you who were there and took the time to tell me what you think of my
work. Thank you.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science
Education (NCSE), mentioned a site called GuideStar. Here you can find out
about the finances of non-profits. The latest data seem to be from 2002. For
example, the JREF had assets of $1.75 million. It had revenue of about
$400,000 (about half of which came from contributions) and expenses of about
$350,000. Compare that to the Discovery Institute (the outfit pushing
intelligent design). The folks there have a bit more in assets but their
revenues are 6 to 7 times more than the JREF ($2.7 million, most of which
comes from contributions) and they had expenses of about $2.2 million. Here
is what this non-profit lists as its mission and program:

Mission: To promote thoughtful analysis and effective action on local,
regional, national, and international issues

Programs: Production of public service books, articles, conferences,
radio, and television appearances.

Yet, about the only thing this outfit does is promote the idea that
intelligent design is a worthy competitor to natural selection! (The NCSE is
mostly devoted to keeping religion and bad science out of the science
classroom.)

For comparison: Shermer's Skeptics Society has about half the revenue of
the JREF. CSICOP (which is under the umbrella of the Center for Inquiry) had
$1.3 million in revenue. Think about it. There are only three big skeptics
groups in this country and together they barely match the financials of just
one non-profit
with a singularly deceptive religious goal. Fortunately, there are many
local skeptics' groups and dozens of groups in other nations. Many of these
groups have a Web
presence.

By the way, when you look up the National Center for Science Education on
GuideStar, you get the following message:

This organization is not required to file an annual return with the IRS
because its income is less than $25,000. It is a 501(c)(03) public charity.

Check out Dean Cameron's page if you're interested in a weird way to
deal with all that e-mail you get asking for your help to receive money on
behalf of SESE-SEKO WIDOW OF LATE PRESIDENT MOBUTU or somebody else with
equally large letters and credentials. (This request is also known as the
Nigerian 419 scam.)

RatbagsDotCom is a site run by Peter Bowditch of Australia. It is
the site many of us wish we had created. Peter single-handedly lists more than 1,000
Web sites that he thinks are run by "dangerous lunatics." My only problem
with Peter is his excessive use of euphemisms. His "Quintessence of the
Loon" page exemplifies his fear of being blunt in his criticism of others.
Peter also has a site called Full Canvas Jacket, which is about 'people who
rant and rage incoherently at length.' There he posts "a collection of
Noteworthy Unhinged Lunatic Rants." He's a sweet guy, too. And wears very
colorful shirts.

I don't mean to suggest that these were the only Web sites mentioned at
the Amazing Meeting 2. But these are ones that are new to me. I've already
mentioned many times in these letters the Web sites of the
JREF, Skeptics
Society,Quackwatch, andBad Astronomy.

***

Some final comments about the Amazing Meeting 2. Atheism and
evolution vs. creationism came up quite often, especially in the panel
discussion sessions, which is interesting since the JREF's focus is mostly
on paranormal claims. This interest in atheism/evolution/creationism
should continue next year, as Randi announced that Richard Dawkins will be
presenting in 2005. Since this topic is still of such interest to so many
people, I'm putting a link here to the paper I delivered at the first
Amazing Meeting.

Randi has announced in his latest newsletter that Dr. Michael Shermer
will be the keynote speaker at the Amazing Meeting 3. Shermer's latest book
is in the field of evolutionary psychology and philosophy. It's called
The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Share, Gossip, and Follow
the Golden Rule. Shermer's talk at AM2 was about his book.

Once again, Randi saved the best for last. The Sunday morning session of
invited papers was first-class. Lt. Col. Matt Morgan, Ph.D., USAF, gave an
excellent talk on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Dr. Ray Hall, a
physicist from Fresno State University, then made a thought-provoking
presentation regarding the demarcation issue of Karl Popper. Ray made a
persuasive case for thinking of science as existing on a continuum from poor
to good science, rather than trying to distinguish science from
pseudoscience. While Ray didn't go into the politics of science education,
one does not have to think too deeply to see that the battle being fought
around the country regarding intelligent design (ID) would take on a very
different aspect were the defenders of science to stop trying to show that
ID is pseudoscience or non-science. What would happen if it were admitted
that creationism or ID is science, but crappy science? Would we then argue
that we should no more teach ID in biology classes than we should teach
Aristotle's theory of motion in our physics classes or Deepak Chopra's ideas
in our quantum mechanics courses? Would we argue that politicians shouldn't
decide between good and bad science? That's the job of the scientists and
the science teachers. We've already seen what can happen when the
politicians determine what is good science: Remember
Lysenkoism?

The final paper was given by Dr. Ray Beiersdorfer, a
geologist, who instructed everybody on what crystals really are, what kinds
of preposterous claims the New Age folks are making about crystals, and why
people seem to believe these preposterous claims. I was very pleased when he
announced that his source for why people believe these weird things about
crystals was The Skeptic's Dictionary.

Many people enthusiastically expressed their
approval of the talk given by Julia Sweeney. She described her
transformation from good Catholic girl to good atheist. Having gone from
good Catholic boy to good atheist, much of what she said resonated with me.
I was very pleased when my friend Liam McDaid introduced me to Ms. Sweeney.
She told me that she had my book and especially liked the astrology entry.
However, she didn't call it a page-turner. She reserved that
expression for Darwin's Origin of Species. When she spotted Randi's
copy of Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, she said that
Dennett's book was the one that most changed her life.

There were several memorable lines uttered at this meeting, but one I'll
never forget was Julia Sweeny saying "Losing my faith was the most spiritual
thing that ever happened to me." It turned her into an activist. No
baby Moses syndrome
for her.

Translations

I'm happy to report that George Moustris, who is translating The
Skeptic's Dictionary into Greek, has already translated more than one
hundred entries. Soon we'll also have some entries in Icelandic.
Matthias Asgeirsson and a few friends in Iceland run a Web site called
vantru.net and they plan like to put up a section with translations of SD
articles. According to Matthias, "vantru" in Icelandic means something like
disbelief. I also heard from Kami Rousseau of the Quebec skeptics.
There are quite a few entries now available in French and more to come. And
I recently heard from Rouven Schaefer of Berlin who calls himself "the vizechairman of
the German skeptics" (www.gwup.org). Rouven wants to do even more translations of
Dictionary entries into German.

I am quite humbled by the fact that people in more than ten countries
have asked permission to translate my work. All the translators have
volunteered their time and have asked nothing in return.

Stats

Note: I advise those not interested in Web site statistics to skip this
section of the newsletter. The bottom line is that every month we're getting
about 450,000 hits on html files from about half a million visitors.

I haven't bored you with Web site statistics in recent issues but I am
running a new program (WebLog Expert) and want to share some of the data
with you. I have a problem, however, because the log file for The Skeptic's
Dictionary for just one day is 30 MB. Since I am only renting 100 MB of
space and my Dictionary files take up about 37 MB of space, I can't gather
statistical data on my site for much more than a day or two at a time without
exceeding my allotted space. So, I am guessing at what the data for one day
might mean when projected over a month or a year. But on January 5, a
Tuesday, we had 177,064 hits. About 2,000 of those hits were from search
engine spiders. If this were an average day, that would put the monthly tab
over five and one quarter million and the annual tab at over 60 million
hits. The number of unique visitors on January 5 was 19,286. Again, if this
were an average, that would mean more than half a million visitors a month
and 6 million a year. There were 39,319 page views that day. That would be
over one million page views per month. Finally, we used 791.63 MB of
bandwidth that day. I rent 25 GB of bandwidth a month. At this rate, I will
come in just under my allotment of bandwidth for the month.

The most popular content page on January 5 was the Myers-Briggs page (546
hits). (I'm not counting the homepage or the table of contents page.) Amway was second (491) and the face on
Mars was third (415). This
last may have had something to do with the first color photos from the
Spirit rover on Mars being published. Lunar effects had 415 hits. Coming in
50th for the day was the magnet therapy page with 131 hits.

The file most downloaded that day (3 downloads) was Jim Alcock's speech
praising Ray Hyman.

Fifty-eight percent of the visitors were from the U.S. About 7 % were from Canada and
about 6 % were from the
UK. Web Log lists the top 50 countries accessing the site.
Number 50 was Iran with 16 visitors.

I repeated the above analysis for a 22-hour period over January 8-9,
beginning at 7 AM on Thursday the 8th. (The reason there are only 22 hours
in the second test is that the server was shut down for one hour and I
stopped the test at 23 hours for my convenience.) The results were: total
hits = 160,238. About 2,000 hits were from spiders. That averages out to
about 4.75 million hits a month or about 57 million a year.

We had 17,962 visitors on the second run. That would average to over half a
million a month and more than 6 million a year.

There were 35,117 page views, which averages to more than one million a
month.

We used 687.73 MB of bandwidth which projects to about 21 GB for the month.

The most popular page on January 8 was the Amway page (480). Second was the
Myers-Briggs page (442). The lunar effects page was third (342). Number 50
was magnetic therapy with 131 hits. My essay on intelligent design was the
most downloaded file (2) that day. Tied at 49th among the countries
accessing the site were Saudi Arabia and Cyprus with 15 visitors each.
Brazil was fourth, with 673 visitors, and Portugal was 9th with 194. Italy
was 7th with 255 visitors. (I host the Portuguese and Italian translations
of The Skeptic's Dictionary on my server.)

Now, wasn't that interesting?

For those who enjoy statistics, I've posted a complete
report for activity
from 6 AM January 9th to 6 AM January 10th.